Deconstructing tourist scams: a social-practice-theory perspective

Tourist scams have been somewhat overlooked due to definitional ambiguities. By focusing initially on conceptual distinctions among a family of related terms, and by introducing the theory of social practice, we considered tourist scams as a practice bundle. Through content analysis of online tourist-generated information and 40 key-informant interviews, we found that this bundle is composed of two interactive practices typically enacted by two parties. Furthermore, we applied the zooming-in technique to deconstruct tourist scams into five crucial elements: materials, meanings and competences in practising scams, meanings and competences in being scammed. By zooming-out, we also discussed the inter-practice relationships surrounding tourist scams. Our work contributes theoretically to tourist safety and security by clarifying conceptual confusions, as well as to tourist behaviour research by depicting the behavioural pattern of tourist scams, and to future studies by revealing opportunities to offer protection to tourists against scammers